I would avoid your plumber being involved in water treatment unless he is an exception to the rule especially if he orders online and not through his plumbing supply. It is a rare plumber who is knowledgeable in water treatment but they're OK to just hook softeners up... although there are reports of softeners plumbed in backwards and resin populating the house plumbing. Softeners soften and ROs clean up water and address taste. 20gpg is pretty hard so the amount of sodium (or potassium) exchanged in the softening process along with the high TDS will influence the taste of the water so an RO may be desirable. Why are you reluctant to get an RO? You don't have to get an RO and one can always be added later. With your water conditions and water usage a 1.5 cu ft softener will do nicely. If you're on 3/4" plumbing then a Fleck 5600SXT with top basket, Noryl bypass, and gravel underbed would be a cost effective and reliable solution. Set capacity @ 30k and short salt at 9lbs for efficient operation and there you go.

1. If you have high Total Dissolved Solids and sediment, then you should be filtering AHEAD of the water softener. The cleaner the water coming into the softener, the less trouble you'll have with nuisance failures like plugged injectors. 2. If your water is really crappy, eg. you can see the dissolved solids, you really should look at a backwashing filter. The benefits are no real reduction in pressure and gpm flow and because the filter (about the size of a softener) automatically backwashers, there are no cartidges to replace, which you will be doing often. 3. You make reference to a $500 fleck. Do you know if it has enough capacity based on hardness vs usage vs # of people in the house? Is it demand based or timer based regeneration? If buying direct are you prepared to ship the thing to the mfg and duke it out with them if it fails? A good rule of thumb when dealing with installed anything to do with your house is take the cost of the goods and double it at minimum. The company installing has to make a profit, deal with warranty, cover overhead......The company in the link I included deals with softeners, filters, everything and the pricing will give you an idea of what decent equipment on it's own is worth. But it's worth nothing to you if it's not installed competently. 4. At 2k installed for a decent softener with warranty through the installer -- it's their baby if something goes wrong, you're not getting robbed. Can you shop it around with smaller independent plumbing contractors? Sure but make sure you can get references and feel comfortable doing business with whomever you choose, that may be worth a few hundred. 5. If you are going to go through the trouble of filtering and softening your well water, you will be a couple of hundred dollars away from not having to rely on bottled water. I mentioned Reverse Osmosis for drinking, it is cheaper in the long run vs paying for bottled and it tastes neutral. Note that the only contaminant that RO can't deal with is hydrogen sulphide (you know it if you have it, your water smells like rotten eggs). Removing hydrogen sulphide is another 2k or so. 6. Before taking the plunge with anyone, you may want to have your water tested thoroughly by an independent lab to see what contaminants are present and see what they recommend for treatment based on your intended usage. Their services aren't free. The cost here for a thorough analysis is about $80. Iron, Hardness, Sediment, TDS is a good starting point if you're not drinking it. 7. Research as much as you can, google google and more google. We moved to the country back in april and had to deal with all of this, minus sediment in the water (I'm lucky, my well starts at 130' and goes down another 30' in fractured bedrock). Being uninformed about rotten egg smell, we almost pulled the trigger on 2k worth of oxidizing and filtering equipment. Turns out that 2/3 of a gallon of chlorox killed the harmless bacteria that was the cause of the smell. -But- The water conditioning pros won't tell you that because they want to sell equipment. Hope my late night rambling helps. Here is a link that might be useful: backwashing filter

Unfortunately that is an obscure brand of softener and the model number is not indicative of it's size. If you measure the height and diameter of the resin tank I can get an idea of the resin volume to determine it's hardness removal capacity. If you could post a picture that might help. Since you're on city water the water authority can provide you a copy of the EPA mandated water tests they routinely do. you need to know hardness, iron, PH, and manganese at a minimum. You said "My wife and I like the feel of water that actually suds up with soap and doesn't leave a gritty feeling after a shower. That's how we equate our hard water (and is also an indicator that I need to replace salt)" and that is a certain indicator that you let the softener run out of salt from time to time. The first time it ran out of salt the softener lost a considerable amount of it's hardness removal capacity and just adding more salt will not recover the resin. So, the softener has not been operating correctly since then. An industry standard softener that is correctly sized and properly set up for the water conditions and water usage on city water should give reliable service for a minimum of 10 years with 15 years being a realistic expectation.

There are a bunch of options that the Evolve unit has that a standard unit does not. Nothing on this unit is PROPRIETARY all parts are interchangeable with a clack ws1 except for the circuit board and the generator, which, are available direct through Water Right if you don't want to go through the dealer. I have NEVER had one fail though so not sure that that is going to be the issue. The chlorine generator kills nuicence bacteria in your water that can cause foul odors and taste, also it is used as a diaginostic tool to provide information such as low salt alarm and brining concentration information. Juding from the water test above, there is about 1.5ppm of iron, a resin unit is only speced out by the resin manufature as being able to handle 1 ppm. CR200 is rated for 10. Your standard water softener will not handle the Manganese either a EV2 will. Yes I do agree that there are some other options out there for some water but in this case, I think that the EV2 would be a perfect solution with a great warranty and company to back the product. Look at the FLECK 5600 for instance or even the 9000 the pistons and products that they are using on those these days are junk, ive seen pistons fail in less than a year. We used that vave foe over 20 years and I will never sell another one again due to durability concerns with the pistons and meter issues. some of the features that the EV2 has are for starters, countercurrent proportional brining. There are few units that offer that as a standard feature. Advanced user history screens, FULL battery back up, salt alarm, pre fill brining, and the list goes on and on.